Many countries in Africa faced large-scale internet outages due to submarine cable failures. MTN Group worked to reroute traffic and NetBlocks highlighted the severity. West Africa was particularly affected. Cables affected include WACS, ACE, SAT-3, and MainOne.
Cable connected to internet router | Image credit: Pexels
Main highlights
- Massive internet disruptions occurred in many African countries on Thursday.
- MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecommunications company, works to reroute internet traffic
- Cables affected include WACS, ACE, SAT-3, and MainOne.
New Delhi: Multiple submarine communications cable failures caused severe internet outages in several African countries on Thursday, network operators and internet monitoring organizations reported.
MTN Group, Africa’s leading network provider, said in a statement: “To reduce the impact on customers in the affected countries, our operations will reroute traffic through alternative network paths to expedite remediation. We are actively working with our consortium partners to achieve this goal.” Dealing with damaged cables. We aim to minimize service interruptions and stay connected by leveraging a robust and resilient network infrastructure. ”
NetBlocks, which describes itself as the “observatory of the internet,” said in a statement: “Statistics show that communications outages in West and Central Africa are ongoing, with further declines in connectivity observed in multiple countries throughout the day. This incident is believed to be due to cable damage affecting the WACS, MainOne, SAT3, and ACE submarine fiber networks.” I observed that a lot of confusion was occurring.
The exact cause of the cable outage was not immediately determined, raising concerns that vital services could be disrupted, especially in hard-hit countries like Ivory Coast. Africa leads the world in her web traffic on mobile devices, highlighting the heavy dependence of many businesses on the internet for service delivery.
The affected undersea cables included the West African Cable System (WACS), the African Coast to Europe Cable (ACE), SAT-3, and MainOne. Internet watchdog organization Cloudflare noted a unique pattern in the timing of the disruptions that have had a major impact on West African countries, including Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso.
South Africa’s leading mobile operator Vodacom has reported connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures. There was also chaos in countries such as Namibia and Lesotho.
The effects of such cable failures are further exacerbated as networks attempt to reroute traffic, potentially reducing available capacity in other countries. The first cause may be physical damage to the cable, but subsequent technical problems may worsen the situation.
